Bugonia - "Sometimes a Species Just Winds Down."

SPOILERS because this has been on VOD for weeks, and now it’s on Peacock. Also, I mainly want to write about the ending.

Yorgos Lanthimos speaks my language. With Poor Things, I realized he was the closest thing to Kubrick we have today. That’s not to say he’s copying Kubrick’s style (though there are certainly similarities), it’s more about his regard to humanity. His films show a disdain for humanity, but in a funny way. When I finish a Kubrick or Lanthimos film, my usual takeaway is that we’re fucked, but we can laugh about it because what else can you do? 

Which brings me to Bugonia. Ignoring the alien aspect for a bit, this film is about how we’ve polarized ourselves as a species into belief systems beyond religion. We now, thanks to technology, can make our own insulated worlds where everything we read and watch that we agree with is the truth, and anything that refutes our views is simply false and most likely part of a secret plot to destroy society as we know it. 

This is most punctuated by Teddy and Michelle’s spaghetti dinner conversation. At one point this interaction takes place:

Michelle: “Truth.”

Teddy: “Lies.”

Michelle: “What’s the difference? I can’t change your mind. 

Teddy: “You’re right. You can’t.”

This is our world now, and Bugonia takes this to the extreme.

In this film, aliens are real and among us, pharmaceutical companies are using us as unwitting lab rats, the Earth is flat, and we are all hollow worker bees waiting for our overlords to pull the plug, which they do at the end. It’s presented as darkly comedic. It has to be because it’s all so inherently silly, even with all the death. 

I hate to apply messages to movies, especially when you can make movies like this mean whatever you want it to mean. But I can’t help but think Teddy is an example of what happens if we just write off the fringe elements of society as simply “crazy.” Sometimes “crazy” people take action. 

But, and this is why I don’t like applying messages, Teddy is right. At least, he’s right about Michelle being an alien. He’s wrong in thinking he ever had a chance of getting to that ship and having an intergalactic détente with a bomb strapped to his abdomen, but he’s right about a lot of stuff. If that’s the case, is the film saying all the conspiracy theories are right? As a liberal, Michelle’s estimation that Teddy is a product of his own internet echo chamber is kind of how I feel about most people who disagree with me, politically and otherwise. So by dismissing people who believe shit like the Earth is flat, is Bugonia telling me I’m part of the problem, and I’m just a worker bee?

I don’t think so. Teddy isn’t presented as a hero here. He manipulates and uses Don just as much as he claims the Andromedans (sp?) manipulate humanity. Everybody sucks, and it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong because the world is already broken beyond repair. So if that’s the gist of it all, why not have some fun and make all the crazy shit real?

Though, based on some reddit deep dives, not everyone believes the alien stuff in the film. Some claim everything after the explosion doesn’t actually happen and is just the imagination of Michelle’s concussed brain. I’m sure people have their own reasons for not believing the alien aspect of the film, but I disagree. I think some people just find it too silly, and rather than admit that a film they liked up to that point faltered (in their opinion), they decide it’s all just a hallucination. My problem with that is that it adds nothing thematically to the movie. We’re meant to consider these two sides of humanity for nearly two hours, then it’s all scrapped for ten minutes of “it was all just a dream”? Not only does that negate anything meaningful, it’s also boring.

Others would argue the opposite, and that Michelle being an actual alien negates the satire of corporate leaders being so indifferent to humans that they could be confused for aliens. Making her an actual alien weakens that. Perhaps, but it’s not like Michelle is surrounded by fellow aliens. There are plenty of humans on board with what corporations are doing. With or without alien interference, humans would still be on the destructive path we’re on. So Michelle being an alien does negate the theory for her character specifically, but not for all of humanity.

Whether or not Michelle is really an alien is the crux of the plot, and with most directors, I would assume the resolution would either be ambiguous, or it would be revealed that this was all just part of Teddy’s mental illness and unwillingness to accept the trauma that has happened to him. That would still be an interesting story, and all the performances would still be as great as they are, but it wouldn’t be nearly as memorable as finishing the film on a spaceship and all of humanity being killed off. 

But since this is a Yorgos Lanthimos movie, I went in expecting the reveal to be that she is an alien. But a few minutes in, I started to wonder, “Does he think we expect the alien reveal, so he’s actually going with the traditional mental illness approach? But is he expecting us to be expecting him to do that, and he’s going with the alien plot?” It’s the kind of circular thinking of a poisoned wine scenario in which characters keep swapping out the glasses trying to anticipate what the other person anticipates until no one knows what the hell is going on. This is why I love Lanthimos’s work. He has established that his films will go to extreme and unexpected places to the point that I could never be fully confident in knowing where his films will go. That’s what makes him such an exciting director to have working today. When you watch as many movies as I do, being surprised becomes a rare gift. 

It’s always great when a movie can be argued about concerning what’s real and what’s imagined, but most importantly, Lanthimos can be counted on to make something entertaining as well as thought-provoking. He doesn’t do it alone, of course. I really need to tone down the auteur theory shit, but I can’t help it with some directors. Bugonia is very much a Lanthimos film, but without the performances of Plemons, Stone, Aiden Delbis, Stavros Halkias, and Alicia Silverstone, this is not the same film. And the score is so perfectly over-the-top. I cannot think of this film without hearing the score, as well. And it wouldn't exist it at all without Will Tracy's script, based on Jang Joon-hwan's screenplay. In other words, I know this isn’t a solo creation, but it’s easier sometimes to write about movies that way. 

All of this is just to say Bugonia is one of my favorite films of the year. My top ten isn’t locked in just yet, but right now it’s Sinners then this. Lanthimos and co. just have this ability to craft these beautifully ugly stories that should be absolutely miserable to sit through, but instead I want to keep returning to it (I’ve watched Bugonia four times as of this writing). And it’s a movie I can dwell on about what’s real and what does it all mean, if anything, or I can turn my brain off and let the insanity wash over me like a bucket of Don’s blood from a shotgun blast. 

Random Thoughts

Just to drive some Google searches my way: the title Bugonia comes from Ancient Greek and is based on the belief that bees were spontaneously generated from a cow's carcass. So obviously there is the bee connection in the film, but it also works for current humanity being the result of the destruction of the Andromedans' first attempt at creating a species on Earth.

According to Plemons, Lanthimos only gave composer Jerskin Fendrix four key words to go with to make the score: Bees. Basement. Spaceship. Emma-bald.” (This is on IMDb trivia, as well.) That’s wild, especially since it’s my favorite score of the year (I didn’t expect to like any score more than Sinners, but it happened). It’s over-bearing, filled with jump-scares, poignant, triumphant; I love it.

I have not seen Save the Green Planet! I plan to soon, but I wanted to write about this before so I don’t look at it as a remake. I don’t mean that I don’t want to consider it a remake; I mean, I don’t want to get distracted by looking at the similarities and differences.

The juxtaposition of the opposing training styles at the beginning is very Rocky IV-esque.

First time I’ve heard semen referred to as “fuck filler.” I don’t like it.

Lanthimos is so goddamned Greek he had to go with Jennifer Aniston for the kidnapping masks.

“No one on Earth gives a single fuck about us.”

The idea of Stavros as a babysitter is hilarious. 

When Teddy goes to hit her with a chair for being the grammar police he truly is the internet personified.

Stavros having to act like he wants cake was a real stretch.

“I don’t get the news from the news.”

Not that there’s a good time for your former sexually abusive babysitter turned cop to pay you a visit, but this has to be the worst time it could have happened for Teddy.

“I never, ever did that to anybody else.” I mean, I guess that’s a good thing, but no way that would ever make a victim feel better.

I know these random thoughts are Stavros-heavy (pun intended), but I watch so much of his podcast, I can’t help but point out how fucking crazy it is to see him in this. One last one: when I first came across Stavvy as a comedian, I would have never guessed I would one day see Jessie Plemons bludgeon him to death with a shovel as his head was covered in bees like Nic Cage at the end of The Wicker Man.

Poor Don. Dude just wanted to whack it, play videogames, eat taquitos, and maybe one day find love. Is that so wrong, or is that living in a prison created by the agro-corporate overlords?

“I’m not a sick ape!” I bet you smell like one, Teddy.

Even when she comes limping in with Teddy, she’s still on that “you can leave at 5:30 if you think that’s okay” bullshit. Total alien behavior.

Poor Things - Kubrickian

Yorgos Lanthimos’s films have always been divisive, with films like Dogtooth, The Lobster, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer either completely working for people (like me) or falling completely flat on their deadpan faces for others. Then The Favourite came out and garnered a lot of awards attention (Olivia Colman won Best Actress and the film was nominated in nearly every major category). While The Favourite has its odd moments, it’s positively mainstream for a Lanthimos movie, which is why it disappointed me. I was afraid that Lanthimos had lost his weird edge. Then Poor Things kicked in the door holding a chicken dog, peed on the floor, tried to punch a baby, and let out a noxious burp bubble into the air.

In other words, Poor Things is wildly strange all around. It’s also the funniest, most well-acted, and inventive film of the year. (It’s also my personal favorite, and it won Best Picture from the Indiana Film Journalists Association.) 

Poor Things is hard to summarize, but here goes: Emma Stone plays Bella, a Frankenstein’s Monster-ish creation of scientist Baxter (Willem Dafoe). She begins the movie as an adult with the mind of a baby, but as she matures at a rapid rate, she decides to see the world with one of the best cinematic rapscallions of all time in Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo, in a shockingly funny performance). Bella sees the best and worst of the world, and it’s all presented in fantastical, horrible, and hilarious ways. 

I typically do not like writing plot summaries (you can always just Google it or watch a trailer or something), but I liked the challenge of it for this one since I liked it so much. This movie simply works on every level for me in a way that I haven’t felt since Stanley Kubrick’s films (more on that later).

The writing (Tony McNamara, adapting the novel by Alasdair Gray) is the standout element, as the entire film is quotable. It’s funny, but the straightforward, child-like dialogue of Bella also points out many of the ridiculous elements of humanity. And while it’s all quirky and funny, I still cared about most of the characters, though they could be framed as villains in other films (especially Dafoe’s character). 

It takes skill to deliver the funniest lines of the script, especially in Lanthimos’s signature tone. And Emma Stone is perfect. She has to play an adult baby, a prostitute, and a scientist all in one role. Her performance as an adult baby alone is adwards-worthy, the rest is just a bonus. And Mark Ruffalo is an amazing foil to her. It’s funny when he just goes along with Bella’s oddness, but it’s the best when she finally breaks him, causing him wonder, “What the fuck are you talking about?” multiple times throughout. His transformation throughout the film is equally impressive and amusing. 

The writing and acting are so great in this film, it almost seems to be a waste that the music and production design are so unique, as well, because they are nearly an afterthought when they would be the standouts in other, weaker films. The discordant score captures the unsettling mood of each scene. And the creatures (what other film has a chicken dog walking around with no one talking about it?) and set decoration complete the picture by creating a world that is recognizable but also fantastical. 

All of this is enough to make this one of my favorite movies in recent years. But it’s the Kubrickian element that I think will cement this among my all-time favorite films. Lanthimos is no stranger to the Kubrick comparison. Anyone who uses deadpan humor, tracking shots, and slow zooms gets compared to Kubrick at some point. This is why I usually don’t like calling things Kubrickian these days. While Poor Things does have all those Kubrick-like elements, I label it as Kubrickian for what it represents in Lanthimos’s career arc. 

Poor Things isn’t actually similar, story-wise, to anything Kubrick would make. But it is the kind of movie he would make. Kubrick, while toiling around in similar thematic areas with his films, never tried to make the same film twice. And Lanthimos appears to be on that same track. The fact that I didn’t love The Favourite now seems like a good thing. If he kept making movies like The Lobster over and over, it would get tiring immediately. To go from Sacred Deer to The Favourite to Poor Things shows a willingness to go to new, interesting places, much like how Kubrick could go from Barry Lyndon to The Shining to Full Metal Jacket. The style may be similar, but the content shows a desire to keep things interesting. And for Lanthimos, that also means getting very weird sometimes, and that works for me. 

Random Thoughts

I only focused on Stone and Ruffalo, but truly every performance in this is great. Dafoe is amazing, of course, and Ramy Youssef has many great moments reacting to Dafoe’s craziness. 

This is a gloriously demented mashup of Benjamin Button, Jack, and Forrest Gump.

“Fate had brought me a dead body and a live infant. It was obvious.”

“It…was?”

“She grabbed my hairy business!”

“I was chloroforming goats all morning. I may have ingested too much.”

Lanthimos is truly like Kubrick. It’s not just that their films share some superficial similarities, it’s the tone in which they are made. This very much strikes me as the type of film Kubrick would make if he were still alive.

I worry myself in typing this, but Yorgos Lanthimos gets me.

I am so happy to live in a world in which a company is willing to give this lunatic a lot of money to make hilarious shit like this, which is a film that dares to ask, “What if Dr. Frankenstein was good at his job?” 

The segment of her just wanting to eat, drink, and fuck reminded me of when Bender became a human on Futurama.

I never knew I needed to hear Mark Ruffalo say, “What the fuck are you talking about?” in a British accent. 

“Hope is smashable. Realism is not.”

Usually, I think movies don’t justify their length, but I could watch Emma Stone break down situations in a deadpan manner for five hours, at least. My favorite was her working out how it made sense to start working in a Parisian brothel.

Her first customer kind of looks like Will Forte from the plane sketch in I Think You Should Leave.

“Hence, I seek employment at your musty-smelling establishment of good-time fornication.”

“She is no different to the chicken dog.”

“He has cancer, you fucking idiot.”

This is the most exciting character Ruffalo has played in years, maybe ever.

Why I Like "Weird" Movies

In my last article about NewsRadio and TV series in general, I pointed out that I liked that show so much because it was a relaxing watch. I could watch episodes out of sequence or even not pay attention to them at all and still enjoy it. I wouldn’t call the show junk food, but it’s not something I feel the need to focus 100% on. There are plenty of films I feel the same way about (and will certainly write about plenty of them on this site in the future), but for the most part, my favorite films are the ones that require focused viewing. Often, a film that needs you to pay attention to it is called “weird.” The movies I’m going to discuss aren’t exactly weird in the traditional sense (but weird is subjective, so technically, everything can be weird), but have been labeled as such because they aren’t easily digestible.

It feels a little hypocritical to write about NewsRadio and praise it because I don’t have to pay attention to it, and then turn around and write about how my favorite movies are the ones you have to focus on. It all comes down to the location of your viewing, though. TV is...TV. You usually watch it in a distracting setting: your home. When I watch TV, it’s rarely the only thing going on. I’m hanging out with my wife, watching my daughter, doing dishes, cooking, doing laundry, checking e-mail, etc. In other words, all kinds of things are going on that keep me from focusing on the show I’m watching. Hence, my favorite show is one that allows for distractions. With movies, the intended viewing location is a dark theater that prohibits (or at least attempts to) talking and cell phones. In other words, films are made to be seen on a giant screen with no distractions.

Of course, I watch movies much more often at home than in the theater, so I love plenty of junk food movies. But my favorites are the ones I saw in the theater that rewarded my attention. The best compliment I can pay a film is that it held my complete attention even though I watched it at home.

I believe this love of complex films that require focused watching leads people to think film critics/buffs are snobs who don’t like “normal” movies. But when you watch movies every day, either for fun or work or both, you tend to appreciate the more nuanced offerings. To continue the food analogy of junk food, think about eating in general. If you eat the same thing every day, you’ll be fine with it, but never impressed. But if you get a new meal, even if it’s worse than what you usually get, you’ll appreciate it just for being different. That doesn’t mean a movie is automatically good because it’s odd; it just means it’s more interesting. And when you watch movies every day, interesting is pretty damn important.

Maybe movies aren’t your thing (just like some people don’t care that much about food), and watching any movie is entertaining because it’s a rare activity. That’s fine, but just realize that critics and dorks like me are going to roll our eyes if you think the latest Transformers was awesome and you don’t even know who Paul Thomas Anderson is. Now that I look at that sentence, I realize that it is a bit snobby, but so be it. The “weird” films are simply better because they move the medium beyond entertainment into the art realm.

Before I get into a few examples, I want to focus a bit more on what weird means to me. Weird is anything that is not predictable. It’s anything that aims to be different. The movies I love that I call weird are not really all that weird. These movies are all popular among most movie buffs and critics. They are also films that are fairly easily explained if you pay close attention. I am aware that there are truly weird films out there that are meant to be more poetry than film. I don’t like movies like that. I need my weird to be entertaining, and, more importantly, I need my weird to be able to be deciphered in a slightly definitive way. That said, here are the “weird” movies and filmmakers that immediately come to mind.

Darren Aronofsky is the first filmmaker to come to mind for a couple of reasons. First, in a recent interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, Aronofsky flat out said he makes “weird” movies. Second, mother! is a recent film that many have deemed too weird because it received an infamous F Cinemascore from audiences. I loved it, of course, because it’s the perfect type of weird for me. On its surface, it is weird. It’s a film that was marketed as romantic thriller (I guess?) but ended up being a completely allegorical film about the environment, artists, humanity in general, etc. Anything that is completely allegorical is going to be a bit weird, since allegory typically requires exaggeration to fit whatever actual point the filmmaker is trying to make. What makes mother! stand out to me along with a few other films (such as Drive, Bug, The Cabin in the Woods, or Spring Breakers) is that people wouldn’t be disappointed with these films if they hadn’t been lied to by the trailers. Of course mother! is weird if you go in thinking it’s just another Jennifer Lawrence movie when, in fact, you’re about to see a Darren Aronofsky film.

I watched mother! completely expecting it to get increasingly insane because I knew Aronofsky wrote and directed it. It’s not that he doesn’t make “normal” movies (The Wrestler is a very straightforward film); it’s that his films are so varied that you know he’s not going to repeat himself. In other words, he’s going to make something interesting. I sat in that theater expecting a puzzle, so I focused on every detail possible. This might seem like homework to some, but this is how I wish I could watch every movie. This is why the theater is such an important part of the process. I’ve watched mother! at home and still enjoyed it, but nothing compares to that viewing in the theater. Before I move on, I just wanted to point out that my favorite Aronofsky film (and his weirdest, in my opinion) is The Fountain.

Next up is Yorgos Lanthimos, writer and director of two of my favorite films in recent years: The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (I also loved Dogtooth). Lanthimos makes different movies, but his style makes them weird. His characters deliver some of the most absurd and childishly direct dialogue in such a deadpan manner I can’t help but laugh. And I think that is his intended effect. I consider his films to be comedies despite their disturbing nature. Comedy and oddness go hand in hand since they are both so subjective.

Comedy brings me to another favorite filmmaker of mine: Paul Thomas Anderson. An argument can be made that most, if not all, of Anderson’s films are comedies, despite the super serious appearance of most of them. It’s no stretch to consider Boogie Nights or Punch Drunk Love comedies, but you wouldn’t initially think There Will Be Blood, Phantom Thread, or The Master are comedies. But I think they are. They are weird comedies, sure, but they are comedies. Watch the jail scene in The Master and tell me that’s not meant to be funny. Every scene that takes place in Eli Sunday’s church in There Will Be Blood is absolutely meant to be funny. And I consider Phantom Thread to a warped romantic comedy, which is to say it’s my all-time favorite romantic comedy.

Before I move on to my last filmmaker, I have to bring up David Lynch. While I love Blue Velvet and like Lost Highway, for the most part I am not a big fan of Lynch. But you can’t bring up weird filmmakers without discussing him. I suppose I’m not as big of a fan because some of his work is so impenetrable, or at least, I just don’t get it (Inland Empire was just a waste of my time). But he has his fans. I’m just not one of them.

The all-time weird filmmaker for me is Stanley Kubrick. As I’ve been writing the entire article, his films aren’t really that weird. Kubrick just has a style and a way of telling a story that usually requires close attention. Also, his films are largely open to interpretation. Eyes Wide Shut is among my favorites for this very reason. I have different thoughts about that movie every time I watch it (and I watch it at least once a year...so who’s the real weirdo, right?). Maybe that’s because I’m a slightly different person each time, but I like to think that it’s more about what a talented and interesting filmmaker Kubrick was that he was able to create a film that could seemingly evolve with each viewing.

I’ll finish with what has become a bit of a trademark for these articles: a rambling paragraph followed by a short summation. This rambling paragraph will cover other filmmakers or films that I love and are considered weird, but for whatever reason, didn’t come to mind at first when I planned this article. All of these could have easily been included in the article in much more detail. Nicolas Winding Refn. Martin Scorsese, especially his recent Silence. Werner Herzog, especially his work with Kinski (which I eventually plan on devoting an entire article to), but also my favorites: Bad Lieutenant and My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. Denis Villeneuve, even though his films have become increasingly popular, I think he’s retained his weirdness. Walker with Ed Harris. Terrence Malick, though I do not care for his post-Tree of Life work. Titus. Southland Tales. The Box. A Scanner Darkly. Synecdoche, New York. A Serious Man. The Coens in general. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Ravenous. I’ll stop now, but just know that there are countless examples, and I’ll never be able to think of them all, and I most certainly left off something or someone so obvious that I will be tempted to return to this article and add it (I’ll let you know if I did that here - I added Fear and Loathing and Ravenous after scanning my collection one last time).

As I stated above, none of these films or filmmakers are actually all that weird. They just demand attention, and they reward that attention. Unfortunately, that means they are “weird.” But I’ve always liked weird. And with so many ways to get a film made today, the weirdness will never stop, and I’ll never stop seeking this weird shit out.